Grow

I wrote a blog a little less than a month ago titled "Create" about my passion for art and I decided to do a sequel of sorts about my passion for gardening .

Art has pretty much always been a major passion of mine, but I recently discovered my passion for gardening in the last 2 years, mostly thanks to my sweet husband.
Most of my memories of gardening from childhood include me pulling weeds -_-

However, Mema and I spent as much time as we could in the orchard back in Kentucky.
Those are sweet, sweet memories.

If you spend any time around me, or are friends with me on facebook/instagram, then I'm sure you have heard allllllll about my garden. Sorry...you might want to stop here if you're sick of it! 

But if you love gardening as much as I do, and you are at all interested in what may be going into our garden soon, then keep reading! 

I have been very blessed by my husband who has given me a huge, beautiful garden! He loves gardening, too, so he was all for having lots of space for plants. We have a large backyard, so sectioning a piece of it off as a secret garden sanctuary wasn't a problem. Even with the garden section closed off our backyard is pretty large. The summer before last, Randy built me 2 raised beds for veggies and I bought some little window boxes for herbs until I fell in love with herbs and realized little window boxes just wouldn't do. My dear husband and father-in-law had just the fix this past year and they made me TWO of these beauties! They're raised tables! They're kind of like raised beds, but on stilts so you don't kill your back. They're pretty much the greatest things ever. AND they allow water to drain well and air to move under them, so herbs do very well in them. I'm obsessed.
Then, we took the leftover boards and made two little boxes for more invasive herbs like mints (that will take over the world if you let them) and lavender, which just gets really big. I love them.

Here you can see our first two raised beds from last year. Then we built those HUGE boxes next to the fence! We planted columnar apple trees in those! They're just like regular apple trees, but they don't spread out. They grow straight up and down, so they don't take up much more space than a pole! We planted 3 columnar apple trees and 2 blueberry bushes, alternating apples and blueberries. They require different types of soil, so that's why there are dividers. Also, we put down black plastic over all the grass (no more mowing!) and punched a few holes for a bit of drainage and put down mulch. Much easier than trying to mow/weed around these boxes!

Our first pomegranate tree. There's another variety a year younger
with an identical trellis on the corner of the same wall. 

Then we put in another box over between our pomegranate trees and so far it just has 2 confederate jasmine plants that are eventually going to have a trellis for the jasmine to climb on the whole wall, so it will smell DIVINE! Our goal is to have a garden that will appeal to many senses. It will be an orchard, a prayer garden, a garden for food,  a place where you can sit and smell scents that are savory and peppery, or as sweet as honey.

These are 2 of my favorites from this year. My lavender and my bay leaf. My bay leaf is actually HUGE now, which is pretty surprising considering they aren't supposed to grow very much. Mine has grown almost a foot or more in a year! We also have a beautiful lemon tree, but I don't think I got any good pictures of it this year!

We have lemons, blackberries, black raspberries, blueberries, pomegranates, and apples 

I also have passion flowers (which have passionfruit!)

I have about 20 varieties of herbs, and several other lovely plant babies :) 

So what's next??

Well, not as much as we'd like, but we are planning on moving forward with our plan! Phase 3 will probably get knocked to next year because of the cost and time, but I'll fill ya in anyway. 

The next BIG step (phase 3) is to put up a fence to section off our garden from the rest of our yard. We just want it to be a quiet retreat from the rest of our yard. Our yard is a giant U shape, and the garden is one side of the U. Anyway, we want to put a fence that has a lattice type idea, but is a lot sturdier. We mostly want to put climbing roses on the side that faces toward the rest of our yard and we want grapes on the inside of our garden. MMMmmmmmm :) 

This year, I want to experiment with succulents, more herbs (of course), and it wouldn't be a good year if I didn't get a new fruit tree! So I think I'm getting 2 :) 

I think I may have talked Randy into getting dwarf cherry and dwarf fig trees :) 

So I'll get a North Star cherry tree (supposed to be the best for pies!) and a Negronne fig tree, because I have this freaky quest to get as many mediterranean plants as possible. Next on my list is an olive tree - a variety called Arbequina - a black olive that's supposed to have this wonderfully buttery taste and is supposed to be great for making your own oil. I hear making your own olive oil is a PAIN IN THE BUTT, and takes A TON of olives, but I'd love to at least try. 

Our gardening buddy :)

We're also hoping to put in some flowers, but we'll see. A greenhouse is also on the phase 3 schedule for next year, but we'll see how that works out! That may be a phase 4 thing considering we want a fairly large greenhouse if we're going to do it. We're of the mindset that if you're going to do something you'd might as well do it right the first time.
I can't wait to see what happens! I just know that is makes me really happy and I really enjoy creating this sanctuary with the love of my life.

The Lord has really taught me a lot about love, hard work, beauty, and patience through plants. Randy jokes with me often about how I'm all about instant gratification, but you can't be that way with plants. You can sit and stare at plants all day long, and you may see a sprout pop a little more out of the ground, or you may see leaves fold in or out, or see leaves bloom or wilt, but you will never be able to make that plant grow. He has taught me a lot about how He takes care of us through plants. It really helps the verses from Matthew 6 fall into perspective for me.
Oh, how He loves us.